What was the name...?

There are no sentimental breakthroughs in Kore-eda’s day in the life—and the flash-forward epilogue implies that they don’t exist in life, period. In this family, people and relationships don’t change in any fundamental sense; avoidance prevails over confrontation. Some might simply chalk this up to Japanese decorum, but it has at least as much to do with Kore-eda’s gimlet-eyed appraisal of how hurts and grievances play out in most families, whatever the culture: silently and subcutaneously, in coded words and actions. But while Kore-eda grants his characters no epiphanies, he allows them pangs of regret and moments of dawning awareness.